Will County Gazette

Will County Republican Caucus Committee met Sept. 7.

Here are the minutes provided by the committee:

I. CALL TO ORDER

II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG

Mrs. Berkowicz led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.

III. ROLL CALL

Minority Leader Mike Fricilone called the meeting to order at 5:40 PM

Attendee Name	Title	Status	Arrived
Mike Fricilone	Minority Leader	Present
Judy Ogalla	Minority Whip	Present
Jim Moustis	Member	Absent
Raquel M. Mitchell	Member	Present
Gretchen Fritz	Member	Present
Donald Gould	Member	Present
Steve Balich	Member	Present
Annette Parker	Member	Present
Julie Berkowicz	Member	Present
Frankie Pretzel	Member	Present
Tom Weigel	Member	Present
Debbie Kraulidis	Member	Present

Also present at the Meeting: N. Palmer, B. Adams

Present from the State's Attorney's Office: K. Meyers

IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTES

V. OLD BUSINESS

Mr. Fricilone noted I’m going to bring one issue up for those of you that’s on Land Use. Last month somebody came forward and wanted to change zoning at 159th, right around the corner from me to I1, so they can put in an oak storage facility. Well now, I don’t know where the Land Use staff got their ideas but they are trying to make a amendment map to make C1, to allow for boat storage. I don’t know who’s on this guy’s side.

Mrs. Ogalla commented I personally think Land Use unless the other side of the aisle in County Board is in there pushing for this stuff because I feel Land Use Dept. is bringing lots of things that we have not talked about.

Mr. Balich stated Homer Glen is going to object. What they’re trying to do is rezone for the city by doing this. They are changing the zoning from industrial to commercial for that type of thing so others can say, it’s commercial and come in there too.

Mr.Fricilone commented if you’re on Land Use Committee, I need you to vote against that map amendment when this comes forward.

VI. NEW BUSINESS

1. Discussion of FY2023 Budget

(Discussion)

Mr. Fricilone stated we have the agenda but of course some of the stuff has not happened yet. I think what we’ll do is have a caucus the morning of the Board Meeting so we can go over anything that’s on the agenda after you have had some more of your meetings because the Land Use meeting is coming up and Legislative is coming up. Legislative there is going to talk about the letter and that old business when the Safe-T Act was passed, and we were pretty much against it. I didn’t send it out to everybody, but Speaker Cowan wanted to write a letter from the Caucus saying, “we need to fix a little bit of this and that”, but we were all against it. I don’t see any reason to send a letter.

Mrs. Parker commented that the Safe-T Act was brought up at Public Health & Safety meeting. Ms. Ventura thought she invited Mr. Glasgow and Mrs. Tatroe spoke and said, Mr. Glasgow said he was never officially invited so he didn’t attend but Mrs. Tatroe spoke on his behalf. Saying basically come January buckle up because things are going to change in Will County.

Mr. Palmer stated just for everyone’s information it is not final yet, but the Legislative Committee is likely going to talk about this too on Tuesday and Mr. Glasgow, the Sheriff, and the Chief Judge were all invited on behalf of the committee.

Mr. Fricilone stated I suggest that everybody attend the Legislative Committee meeting if you can so we can weigh in. Today we’re going to get into the budget. I hope everybody read it. A couple of things. It is hard in some cases to compare to last year because what the Executive did was change departments and moved people around so, if you look at strictly the County Executive the mail people use to be in her budget, but she made that a separate department, so it actually looks like her budget is going down because she shifted things around. The costs are still comparable of the people that she has versus the same people that she had last year. Also, I don’t like the way they did the page numbers because they have 5 different sections, and it doesn't say DRAFT on it. The Executive obviously thinks this is it. The other thing is if you go to the back of the book to 2 things in particular that you make sure you look at is page 10, under Capital Projects it shows you the projects that the Executive is recommending going forward in next year in the budget. Pages 1 through 9, tells you how they make selections and all the projects that they think we have listed by priorities and then it shows the 4 or 5 projects they chose to work on.

Mr. Palmer commented this just arrived today at the County Board Office. This went by poking by some board staff that the Executive’s Office provided the capital plan and a letter attached to it and will be in your mailboxes, it’s a little easier to read than what’s in the budget book and there are some additional details. I believe this is a DRAFT and should be listed as a DRAFT because we haven’t approved but at least I found it easier to read. I just got today an electronic copy which we will send out to everybody.

Mr. Fricilone stated behind the Capital projects is the levy information and as you probably all saw there taxing to the max. They’re taking 5% and all the new construction. So, as leadership you guys have to tell me what you want to do. I’m going to tell you right now do not tell me you do not want any increases because that would be a waste of my time talking because you know that’s not going to happen. We have to decide if we want to go back and say, hey we’re not taking more than 4% increase or whatever number you come up with but if you say that you also have to give me the ammunition what are you cutting out of the budget. We need to do this quickly. Don’t come back to me saying 0 because they’re not going to accept that. We can vote no on whatever comes up.

Mrs. Ogalla commented they are just really increasing a lot from all our previous years. I haven’t had a moment to look at each individual thing.

Mr. Fricilone stated keep in mind that all the increases for the union workers are in there because we passed contracts that have an increase in them, and that number goes in there.

Mrs. Berkowicz stated I went to the draft budget meeting and Mrs. Howard told us that she was taking the cannabis taxes and dividing them into. She’s taking those taxes and spending them so maybe we can.

Mr. Fricilone replied it’s a draft budget.

Mrs. Berkowicz stated she’s proposing.

Mr. Fricilone stated I was going to do that later but we’re not going to let her put cannabis in there because we haven’t decided what we want to do with the cannabis taxes, yet. We’re going to pull that out. Let me say this, she put it in there as revenue and she put it in there as expense so when you pull that out it doesn’t change the money that we’re asking for in the levy because that tax money is already here. What she’s doing is just slight of hand because she thinks she going to spend it the way she wants to spend it and if we pass the budget the way it was, she could. The other side is in agreement and we’re taking that out because it hasn’t been decided how we’re spending it. Just because you take $2 million dollars out you also take $2 million expense out so that’s a wash.

Mr. Fricilone stated I am asking what do you want to do?

Mr. Pretzel asked if we don’t vote for anything over 4% how much of the budget are we asking to cut?

Mr. Fricilone replied about a $1,500,000.00 because there’s $9,000,000.00 in the 5-point increase with new construction. If we take a point out it’s about $1,500,000.00. If we don’t have an answer yet, that’s why I wanted you to take a hard look at the budget. Look at major areas and see what your thought process is.

Mr. Pretzel asked if this Safe-T Act does pass does it go into effect. We already talked about our correctional facility going down to 100 inmates. From 900 to 100. What are we looking at there as far as staff reductions? I mean do we need as many CO’s if we have 100. I mean if I cut that budget those guys are never going to vote for me again.

Mr. Fricilone replied you’re going to lose revenue, but you also should cut staff then. You don’t need CO’s if there’s no one to watch.

Mr. Palmer replied I’m just saying what I’ve heard from people that the State’s Attorney’s Office is potentially not from the jail so much as it is from the bail and other things, that’s there’s like a $10 to $13 million dollar revenue loss now. I’ll let them explain. If you have less ADF employees, then maybe but you might have more people doing probations or more street deputies. If $10 to $13 million is the right number we have a big problem, even if its half that it’s a big problem. Five million dollars out of our budget is a huge hole in our budget.

Mr. Pretzel asked I’ve never heard anybody and I’m sure there are some fees that we get for housing inmates, but I’ve never heard totaled ever. Like for each inmate we get x amount of dollars. Understanding on what’s going on over there at the jail and that they are forcing overtime on these CO’s because they’re understaffed right now. I promise you that labor cost is going to go way down in a few years.

Mr. Fricilone replied if that’s the case then that’s’ a problem because we added CO’s to deal with that and the overtime went way down.

Mr. Pretzel commented the Sheriff just recently said he’s down at least 20 people because he can’t fill positions, so that may be why they have overtime if you don’t have a full staff that’s the problem.

Mr. Gould commented the problem is you’re probably going to be 3 months into fiscal year next year and worst-case scenario to Mr. Pretzel’s point, 3 years from now 80% of your jail is released and 20% that remain are newly jailed and then you’re going to have a lot of idle people. That’s a plausible scenario. The expenses and cost of labor outweighs court fees and revenue that is brought in. Then again, just down the road what does the next Board do if they are 3 months in and can this be adjusted? I’m not talking about the levy; I’m just talking about the budget.

Mr. Fricilone commented I think everyone thinks there’s going to be a Hail Mary and they’re going to stop the Safe-T Act until they clean it up. I don’t know that’s the case I would hope that’s the case. I don’t think at this point we can budget for that because we don’t know what’s going to happen all we can do is budget based on what we normally do. We’re not going to know until January 1, 2023, and see what happens.

Mrs. Berkwicz asked under contractual services on page 10 the last line there it says other professionals’ services and for 2023 they’re recommending $650,000.00. Do you know what these other professionals’ services are because that goes up.

Mr. Fricilone asked Mrs. Berkowicz what $300,000.00 were you talking about? Mrs. Berkowicz replied it was page 2 on County Board budget.

Mrs. Hamann replied a huge chunk of that was for Kronos and Fortium. It’s been removed from our budget. We won’t be paying that out of our budget next year it’s going to ICT where it should be, but there was no change to our budget we still have that cushion for other professional services. The $400,000.00 it’s $450,000.00. Part of what the Executive proposed was taking cannabis number and using it for legal services for expungement, so they put that in the Finance Dept. legal line item.

Mr. Fricilone stated she put cannabis revenue in this budget, and she put expenses against it. She decided what she was doing and we’re not doing that. Both sides are in agreement that we’re taking that out.

Mrs. Hamann stated so if you take all that out $450,000.00 goes out. For your levy for every 1% that you change it will be like a $1.8 million difference.

Mr. Fricilone commented as far as the other professional services in the Executive’s budget we are going to cut that.

Mrs. Hamann stated her budget is on page 5 where you start to get into the individual departments, so you’ll see the County Board’s department first then on page 5 is the middle part of the County Executive’s budget. She has $300,000.00 recommended, year-to-date they’ve spent $210,000.00. Part of what’s in that year-to-date that’s been spent that $210,000.00 includes:

$80,000.00 that you spent on Carmona Solutions

$5,000.00 per month retainer for Anne Schneider

$6,000.00 per month for the Forrest Group

$3,250.00 per month for Eric Maddington which is a lobbying service that the Executive’s Office uses

Also, in there is a 2 page ad that she took out for Heritage Corridor and then she had her Will County Government League dues which were $22,000.00. That I believe is a mis-booking that should come out of Dues & Subscriptions, I think that’s an error. Because if you look at her Dues & Subscriptions they are down and she’s still projecting $70,000.00 and I spoke with Mrs. Howard about it so, I think that’s on the wrong side.

Mr. Fricilone stated so we should cut at least $100,000.00, if not $150,000.00 out of that budget.

Mrs. Parker asked so is The Fource going to continue, or doesn’t she have a block people communication that the Board supports?

Mr. Palmer commented that’s not the only place that The Fource is being paid. That’s what’s in the Executive’s budget they are being paid from other budgets that are under her control too. They are a bunch of other sources and funding for the forest.

Mrs. Parker asked so what is it used for is it just the Executive?

Mrs. Hamann replied the Health Department uses them. It’s a $6,000.00 retainer that she uses and have them do whatever work that she needs.

Mr. Palmer commented and she has a staff person, I think they’re down to one in that office.

Mrs. Parker commented so $6,000.00 a month for her to advertise herself. That’s ridiculous. Let’s start cutting there.

Mrs. Berkowicz asked was that for doing all the COVID marketing because that should be going away.

Mrs. Hamann replied that didn’t come out of this budget. She did use them for that but that was in the CARES Act budget. That’s a separate special fund budget.

Mr. Fricilone asked do you have any big issues that you want to talk about. Leadership sat down last week for 5 ½ hours and went over this budget and we developed questions on both sides, and most of the questions were from both sides, and Mrs. Hamann wrote all of those down plus other ones that she had and went to Mrs. Howard and asked for answers on all of those. Just printed it today, we can get this out tomorrow. Tomorrow we will get a copy of this, and you can kind of look it over and as you’re going through the budget, I think it’s kind of in order. It’s in order of pages of stuff that we saw that we had questions about and give your answers. Some of them make sense and some of them not so much. Some of them they didn’t really answer the question, Mrs. Howard didn’t. What leads me to believe that there is no answer. For example, on page 34, courthouse food, apparently, we pay a minimal dollar amount to Quest Management to do food service in the courthouse. From what Mr. Meyers is telling us it sucks, and they have nothing on the shelves, so nobody goes there. So, we might be paying them because they’re not doing their job. That’s the Executive’s job to manage that. That’s a contract that we approved, and the Executive signed.

Mr. Meyers commented that’s pretty much it there’s been less and less stock there for about 1 ½ years and slowly going down.

Mr. Fricilone asked I think that will answer a lot of questions because that’s a lot of the questions we had but what other questions do you all have on the budget? As far as anything major. Now, we are going to have revenue on Tuesday so, the meeting for revenue on Tuesday, at 2:00. Any other major questions anyone want to talk about?

Mrs. Hamann stated some quick highlights I mean obviously the front part. Pages 1 through, the very front part, where the page numbers start to be the corporate expenses and then, actually it’s pages 1 through 14. This is the entire corporate budget summarized in these 14 pages, the revenue, and the expenses. It’s half of them of the various departments. If you want details on something you will find it on pages behind there. Then you have your 80 special funds. That’s where you can’t be moving money back and forth. Many of them have their own revenue sources. Their revenue has to balance their expenses. Other than those, Capital Improvement Fund, the cannabis tax fund, those you have a little control over and how those are spent. If you don’t want how she’s going to spend the cannabis money, then you have to take that money out of because she’s putting some of that money into the corporate budget. Then you have to make that adjustment and take that money out and adjust your expenses because everything has to balance. The other areas you might want to concentrate on is the front section, if you want details, then go into the cannabis fund, look into that. Then the Capital Improvement fund you definitely want to take a look at all that information because some of those feed into the Corporate. There’s nothing in here regarding the courthouse demolition, it’s not accounted for and the asbestos removal, the plan is there’s money in there, if they go forward some of it will get expensed out of this budget and the remainder will get expensed out of next year’s budget.

Mr. Palmer commented the $10 million the way that I understood it, if you take the $10 million it’s a one-time thing, you can’t go back but you can take $10 million, it basically becomes corporate money. So, we’re going to do potentially, if you all approve it, we’re going to do things that we need to do like I.T., the must do things like cyber security. There’s a list of things that we’re going through that must do things.

Ms. Mitchell commented not that I’m against any of this but are these things accounted for in the budget as well. On one hand are we getting these funds from one and then putting in the budget? Where is the $10 million coming from and if they are going to various projects that are already accounted for in the budget?

Mr. Fricilone replied none of these are accounted for. We need to determine yet how to spend and our Executive Committee is going to weigh in on that, we haven’t done that yet, but it will be for loading the budget up so, that take the money out of it. It’s to do stuff that we need to do.

Mrs. Hamann stated right now all the ARPA money sits in an ARPA fund, in a special fund. When they are ready to spend the $10 million because they’re concentrating on Capital Improvement projects that we need to get done and it will get sent over to the Capital Improvement budget, it won’t go into the corporate budget.

Ms. Mitchell replied I understand that. That’s not the questions. The question is, say I want a new phone system, is the phone system already in the budget?

Mr. Fricilone replied no. Out of the departments in the County they were asked what projects they need to get done and $65 million dollars of requests came in for the $10 million dollars that we have to spend. What has been done is they started to be prioritizing those to see what we needed the most and that will be brought to the Executive Committee, the ARPA Committee, to look at and ask, does this make sense.

Mrs. Ogalla asked is this I.T. in this budget?

Mr. Palmer replied I think what you’re asking is if people had money in their budget if we give them ARPA money so now, they have extra money to spend with, and the answer is, we’re not going to let that happen. The goal is to fund the things this group.

Mr. Fricilone commented something that has to happen is in the budget. These are things that we don’t need to happen, but we don’t have budget money for it on the request. If, it is something that needs to happen right now, it is in the budget but we’re not going to use this extra money for it. They don’t get to decide what goes into their budget, what the number is. They request things and normally they do request more than what they get but they don’t get it just because they requested it. The Copperfield building if you all want to sell it, we’ll let’s sell it. If that’s what you want to push, then we sell the building.

Mr. Gould asked getting back you said, both caucuses are not in agreement with the Executive on the cannabis expenses. What is leaderships vision of what the cannabis revenue expense would be from a leadership perspective. Have you talked about that? What are you going to go to our caucus with as you see it happening with that.

Mr. Fricilone replied we the other thing in the budget. Remember last year when we raised the CAC contribution to $450.000.00. Several years ago, started putting $150,000.00 in their budget and last year in our last ditch move we put $300,000.00, additional in there and made it $450,000.00, which we all said it was going to be yearly. They took the $300,000.00 out of this year’s budget and pushed it back down to $150,000.00, which there’s no way that they’re going to be able to operate on that, especially since the cases are rising. My thought is a piece of that money should go. We have 2.6 but that’s not the annual. The annual revenue is 1.2, I think.

Mr. Palmer stated just to remind everybody we had a presentation from the CED on revolving loan program and the Executive’s Office talked to us about the Housing Assistance Program last week. Speaker Cowan had compiled a few ideas together to put it out there and we talked briefly about it. Tomorrow on the Executive agenda there’s an item without any specifics but cannabis tax revenue, the CAC allocation, so tomorrow, I’m not saying it’s best holistic approach, but we can take action tomorrow and allocate a portion put it to the Board in September to allocate a portion of the existing revenue to the CAC. Then at least start the spending of that right now. It was a lot of discussion last week and Ms. Ventura was asking, how is that tied to the impact of cannabis. I think there’s potential based on last week’s conversation and support from some people.

Mr. Fricilone stated I will bring that up again that instead of funding out of our budget why don’t we do a $1.5 million dollars a year out of the cannabis tax for CAC operations.

Mr. Palmer stated it’s only appropriated 1 year at a time. You can say, we want to fund it for multiple years but.

Mr. Fricilone replied but you want it to be an annual thing because Mrs. Howard said, I didn’t know you wanted to do it annually and you did that last year.

Mr. Palmer replied in the resolution you can spell out what the intent is, and a future Board can obviously change that but at least you’re saying, this is what we thought at the time.

Mrs. Ogalla commented if I remember the additional holiday Juneteenth cost approximately $1 million dollars. What I remember seeing in the conversation is we don’t have to give them Juneteenth. We all talked about possibly taking away one of the other holidays that we do give them that we don’t have to.

Mr. Fricilone replied we can’t take it back now.

Mrs. Ogalla stated how did we give it to them? We didn’t get a chance to give it to them or not because it happened now.

Mr. Fricilone replied there was a resolution. What I said originally was that we shouldn’t give anybody Juneteenth now until the negotiation with the contract is over because at that point potentially, we can eliminate one of the President Days. At that point in the negotiation they could say, we’re going to do Juneteenth, but we are eliminating one of the President Day’s so that we weren’t adding an extra holiday. We would shift it to something that was more current, but nobody wanted to go that route on the other side. They said, no, we want that right now. We can’t go to the union now and say, okay get rid of one of your holidays. I mean there’s no leverage.

Mr. Palmer stated the difference is by us officially recommending it makes people who work that day eligible for extra pay. If the County didn’t officially take action. There’s something about the weekends and how it’s only going to happen periodically, but it allows people who work on the weekend to get double time.

Mr. Fricilone replied that ship sailed. It wasn’t me having an issue against Juneteenth, it was an issue about the negotiation when you’re in a contract. We can’t take stuff back that we give them.

Mrs. Ogalla commented we all supported that idea we didn’t have a choice. Mr. Fricilone replied so that’s over.

Mrs. Ogalla commented why do they work at all. Between the holidays, sick pay, personal time, all of that, why do we have them work at all. Stay home and I’ll just pay you.

Mr. Weigel commented that I saw somewhere where the Health Department budget didn’t change but I can’t find it now.

Mrs. Hamann replied are you talking about their salaries? There’s a separate department for just the salaries and I know exactly what you’re talking about. They didn’t take any salary increases. I think it’s like 4 employees and they are all administrators. The Health Department is made up of like 20 little departments and one of those departments there was no change.

Mrs. Ogalla asked do we know about any jobs that haven’t been filled and how long have they been vacant? Do we know?

Mrs. Hamann replied a lot of departments have vacancies to fill that they have not filled. Some have been longer than others. Now, I said it in all those meetings and Mrs. Howard would always ask, what of these do you really need to fill. She got rid of a bunch of them. How many I really don’t know and can go back and have her count how many vacancies she got rid of in each department, but she did get rid of positions that were sitting there for more than 2 years.

Mrs. Ogalla asked so there are some.

Mrs. Hamann replied so there are some, but they want to fill them. Some of the departments they need the staff.

Mrs. Ogalla replied obviously they don’t because we’re getting along every day. Mrs. Hamann stated but some of them you’re paying in overtime.

Mrs. Ogalla stated I would like to see that because we know that all budgets is a bunch of fudge.

Mr. Fricilone replied we should get a list of vacancies and I did when I was chairman. At least we do have on here how many each department has which they didn’t use to do but it doesn’t tell you the vacancies.

Mrs. Ogalla stated because that’s a place I would like to start to cut because at the end of every year they are changing of the money from this account to that account to balance things out. Now, I am assuming some of that because I am hearing conversations that if you don’t use it, you loss it. If we have line items that are high and we’re moving it somewhere where they don’t lose it because they have to use it that would be another thing to look at.

Mrs. Hamann replied so what will happen is you’ll get an end of the year, and a bill comes for a subscription, and you don’t have the $10,000.00 to pay that subscription, you already maxed out that budget. Then they’ll move something that you didn’t use any money from, and they’ll move it over there, but you can only move within certain numbers.

Mr. Palmer stated Land Use went from 70 staff to 45 staff over the past 16 years. They reduced the size of the department and got more efficient. They reduced staff and paid people more, but they got more efficient.

Mr. Fricilone stated Mrs. Hamann is going to send you all an email that has all the questions that she has and all the questions we have. Read through that before you mark up your book and say why can’t we cut here or there because it may be on your sheet already. The deadline for this is by the September 15th meeting because by the October meeting we have to have our numbers together if we are trying to cut stuff or change a levy.

Mrs. Mitchell asked is this the wrong time to ask a question regarding something unrelated to the budget? About our meetings that we had this week.

Mr. Meyers replied I prefer that you don’t get too deep into anything because the agenda only listed budget discussion.

Mr. Fricilone replied we can talk about it at our next meeting before the Board meeting.

Mr. Fritz asked would you like our questions submitted in writing?

Mr. Fricilone replied I would like that because then I can give them to Mrs. Hamann and she can say, no we can’t do that because of something or whatever.

Mrs. Ogalla asked what was the CPI that got taken last year?

Mr. Fricilone replied last year it was $1.4, the year before that was $2.3. Mrs. Hamann stated this is the first year in 10 years that the CPI is over 5%.

Mrs. Ogalla stated this is out of control. This is a bunch of Democrats that are out of control and Mrs. Traynere has said, time and time again we never had the opportunity to take this money before we need to take it now. That is what Mrs. Traynere’s philosophy is, that’s what their philosophy is, and they got to hear about it talking about all the poor people who can’t even afford to live in a shoebox that we have to give all this money to all the time but yet, by taxing to the max they are causing everybody that pays property taxes where these people live for their rent because everything has gone up and they don’t care about it.

Mr. Fricilone stated you used to be able to say that to them because we had the majority back then. We have to think strategically. We don’t have the votes. If we can present a case that we can cut monies out that the Dems agree with because that’s the Executive or we’re hitting that they agree with, and Mrs. Traynere and Ms. Ventura agree with then we have a shot but we’re blowing in the wind if we going to try to do what we did as a majority. I’m all for that if we were in the majority. We tell them here is what we’re doing. If we were in the majority, do you think we would have let a 5 go through. We would have sat down with the Executive and said here’s the deal, we’ll let you go to 3% and that’s it because inflation is at 6.8%. That’s what we use to do with Mr. Walsh.

PLEASE BRING YOUR BUDGET BOOK WITH YOU

VII. COMMITTEE REPORTS

VIII. OTHER NEW BUSINESS

IX. PUBLIC COMMENTS

X. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR

XI. ADJOURNMENT

1. Motion to adjourn the meeting @ 7:15 p.m.

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